1. I cannot deduct the cost of medical insurance on my taxes. This is absurd on its face. Not only is health insurance fully deductible for companies who insure their employees, but this is also a TAX-FREE benefit for those employees as well. This makes no sense.
2. I am not eligible to collect unemployment. This one actually makes sense for obvious reasons: a business owner can’t lay himself off, and providing unemployment insurance for sole proprietors is a major incentive for them to game the system. But I would certainly recommend a corrective measure where small businesses are able to put aside a percentage of their pre-tax gross revenues in cash reserves that function like retirement accounts but can be tapped as needed during rough times like this.
I believe one can borrow from one’s IRA for 60 days without penalty.
Be aware that I think it will be ten weeks before business conditions will generally be normal.
I’m in the same boat. We get none of the benefit of the tax preference for employer-provided medical insurance, but we bear the burden of all the market distortions caused by it. We should absolutely be able to deduct our health insurance.
Also, Obamacare is a disaster for the self-employed—Congress either forgot we existed when they wrote it or wanted to punish us for voting Republican. Either the whole thing needs to be repealed (my preference) or there needs to be an amendment allowing the self-employed to buy group plans. We got a group plan when my wife left her employer to join my practice, but we basically had to manipulate the books and exploit a loophole to do it.
A tax-advantaged “rainy day” fund would make a lot of sense, too, though I think it should just be combined with retirement accounts. Just allow us to withdraw from our IRAs without penalty during a declared disaster and some other defined occurrence such as a recession or a specific decline in earnings, and increase our allowed contributions.